As with the Blind Dead series, cult director Amando de Ossorio once again goes to myths and legends as inspiration for THE LORELEY'S GRASP, one of the better efforts in his filmography. According to Germanic legend, Lorelei (or Loreley) is a love-scorned woman who threw herself off of a cliff (now known as Lorelei rock on the eastern side of the Rhine River) and transforms into a sea creature. The Lorelei uses her song to attract sailors to her rocky cliff and their deaths. So, basically, she's a killer mermaid.

The LORELEY'S GRASP starts off with a woman chasing her fiance away from her bedroom window, as he's stumbled back from his bachelor party, completely sloshed, probably trying to be a peeping tom. After her fiance begins the walk back to his house he most likely won't remember in the morning, a giant creature crashes in through her window and kills her.

But wait, what the hell is a mermaid doing on land? And why does it look like a dinosaur with a piranha head wearing Dracula's cape? I tell myself, “It's the rustic charm of the film”, and I carry on.

The next morning, the town gets together and tries to theorize how this poor bride to be was killed. The token blind musician gives his theory of the Lorelei, who has returned from her centuries long slumber to kill a few locals, eat a few hearts and generally turn the town upside down. After being shushed, the locals decide that it must've been a bear (though it must've been a very limber bear if it jumped up to a second story window and crashed through). At that very moment, a teacher from the all-girl school joins them in the pub, requesting protection from said acrobatic bear, otherwise the school will relocate itself to another town. And, for a town that is seemingly only populated by men, the task of protecting the all-girl school rises to number one on their list. To watch over the school, they hire Sirgurd (Played by Tony Kendall, who is probably most famous for Bava's The Whip and The Body), an expert hunter who has been protecting the town his whole life.

Sirgurd arrives at the school, only to see what all men know an all-girl school is like: about 20 beautiful bikini clad teens, tossing a beach ball back and forth in a grotto, giggling, while cheap porn music plays in the background. The rest of the film has Sirgurd surrounded by nothing but gorgeous woman, while stopping the Lorelei's murderous attempts on more than one occasion. If it weren't for the lack of nudity usually featured in Ossorio's films, I'd say this film had the perfect setup for porn.

While all of the actors put in some decent B-movie performances, I think what really stood out to me was the score by Anton Garcia Abril, who worked with Ossorio for his entire Blind Dead series. While not as experimental in LORELEY's music as he has been in other compositions, the score perfect conveys the supernatural and romantic nature of the Lorelei, while keeping with the overall mood of the film.

THE LORELEY'S GRASP certainly restored my faith in the post-Universal sea creature genre and will undoubtedly hold a special place in my heart. For fans of forgotten so-bad-its-good junk films, look no further. THE LORELEY'S GRASP might be drowning among the other cheap looking horror films of yesteryear on your local DVD store's shelf, but its definitely worth a watch.

Special Features

As with the other Euro horror titles BCI has released as of late, the linear notes included come highly recommended. Writer Mirek Lipinski goes in depth about the Loreley legend, production history of the film and an update on the actors. Along with the linear notes, BCI has included a Spanish and English audio track, an alternate Spanish credit sequence, theatrical trailer and still gallery.